FIRE and your children's ages?

[DawgMan]

I tell you, I admire those of you who RE (as in no part time income or spouse working... at least my definition) with multiple kids that are younger (under college age). As a parent of 4 kids 20, 22, 24, 26 and 2 still in college, I have timed my RE at 55 when the last one graduates. Between cars, insurance, "other kid costs", college costs, weddings, and just general kid costs, I just feel too exposed to shut down the money making machine. It would be interesting to hear from some of you 10 years later to see if you made it thru the those expensive kid years without turning the money machine back on. More power too you!

 

[euro]

Retired earlier this year at 55. Wife retired 2014 at 53. Kids 23 and 21

 

[W2R]

My daughter was 31 when I retired at age 61. I waited until she was grown and gone before divorcing my ex, and then it took quite a while after that before I could retire.

 

[45th Birthday]

It would be interesting to hear from some of you 10 years later to see if you made it thru the those expensive kid years without turning the money machine back on. More power too you!

We are just a bit past 10 years post-FIRE. Both our kids have graduated from college, work in good jobs, and support themselves. We paid their expensive private college costs and also covered some costly items related to medical issues for them, now resolved. We have not lowered our standard of living and in fact now live in two much nicer houses than the two we lived in then. Net worth now 22% higher than the day I stopped working for money. We were fortunate to start with a big enough nest egg, and spent less than we made. Lately we have relaxed a bit on the spending, but still not dipping into the pot.

 

[SilentWalker]

Planning on starting a sabbatical probably leading to retirement mid next year or earlier. I will be 53 and DS will be 3. Really looking forward to a second career as a SAHD. Also, DW has started talking about a second baby...

 

[FUEGO]

How old were / will your youngest child be when you retire? Beyond money, what considerations are there for you??

I retired 3 years ago at age 33. My kids were 1, 7, and 8 at the time (one still in diapers, the other two starting second and third grade, respectively).

Money wasn't too much of a consideration. We knew what we were spending, we knew it would get a little more expensive for food, clothes, etc but child care would drop to zero. We set aside "enough" to help significantly with college plus cover the big unknown kid costs (braces? car? teenager insurance?). I think we'll be okay from a financial perspective and will know a lot more in another 7-8 years once the oldest 2 are in college.

I also worried exactly zero that my kids would think me a lazy bum. They never saw how hard I worked while at work, or what I did at work. They mostly saw me at home at night and on the weekends, trying to catch up on personal pursuits and taking care of all the errands and crap that life throws at you.

Since retiring, most of the stress melted away, and what's left is very manageable.

I retired early in part to spend significantly more time with our kids before they turned into surly teenagers and "never wanted to see our ugly parent faces ever ever EVER!! again"! So far so good. We've discovered a few major issues as the oldest transitions to middle school and helped her solve these problems very well (dealing with bullying; changing study habits to go from F to A in six weeks). Hard to imagine we'd have the mental space, time, and energy to handle this stuff as well if we were still working.

And after spending the day with some new family whose kids are the same age as ours, I realized our kids are 1000x better off than some other kids (even though those other kids have a MUCH higher material lifestyle than our kids enjoy, and our kids were shocked to find out that's a pretty typical "high income, high spend" lifestyle that many kids enjoy). These kids today were pretty F'd up in many regards and holy crap I deserve some gold stars and A+'s for my parenting skills.

I'd like to think I could handle equally well the rigors of parenting while still working full time, but I think there's a non-zero chance I would have given up, said screw it, and let my kids be little snotballs as I go bury my head in some other pursuits (this seems to be pretty common among the "high income, high spend" community).

Instead, we actually talk with our kids a lot. We do slow paced fun (usually free) activities together. We do extended travel (and the kids actually want to go; something I hated as a kid). They are cool telling us about their friends and discussing most things with us. Our kids are far from perfect (some days I feel like googling the foster system to see if there might be a way to give them to someone else) but I feel like the extra time we have in early retirement allows us to cope with their challenges of growing up.